Respect Your Casuals

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So this is a bit of a weird tangent, and I am not even certain where it is going to end up… but here we go. I’ve been seeing sentiments for years expressed each time a game fails or a game flounders and I think in large part they point at a larger misunderstanding by a segment of the gaming community. More recently this has been happening quite a bit in the New World community, where everyone can for the most part agree now that the game is failing or is in a failed state… but no one can agree as to why. I’ve seen lots of people point at the game’s failure because one of several reasons… here are some summary takes that I have read:

The game is failing because…

  • it abandoned hardcore dark souls combat
  • it did not focus solely on open-world PVP
  • it did not focus solely on arena combat
  • there isn’t enough endgame PVE content

There are of course other takes that I could include, but I am largely focusing on these four takes because I have seen them the most. My feeling is that New World is failing because it did not create an ecosystem that was friendly to casual players and did not give them a reason to stick around. It launched with a poor server design that had a cap of 1500 players, making it deeply difficult for people to get logged in and actually play on the same server as the rest of their early adopter friends.

They created a dungeon design system that made it difficult for players to group up and do things together and a questing system that literally made it impossible to help someone out with key gating quests after you had completed it yourself. Then when the most hardcore of players had “finished the game” by rushing ahead in the first day or two… a patch was released that moved the goal posts for more casual players to where they might never be able to accomplish the same things actively breaking some of the most casual friendly content in the game.

Basically, my takeaway as to why the game failed is that it did not respect its casual population. Please note I am not a casual gamer. I spend a truly stupid amount of time playing whatever game I happen to be hyper-fixated on. I am no longer full-on Hardcore, but I live in a comfortably Mediumcore existence where I cherry-pick the activities that I care enough about to actually focus and gear for. However, one thing I have noticed over the years, is that that games that ultimately thrive… are the games that respect the casual player base the most.

What I mean by this is these are the games that make it easy for you to drop in, play with your friends if you have them, or still get content done if you are a purely solo player. As much as the more serious gamers lament the existence of LFR in World of Warcraft, it allows players to see end-game stories without having to deal with the treadmill of endgame progression. Similarly, I think the big open-world boss battles in Guild Wars 2 are a testament to just how good a game can feel when it has respect for its casual player population.

The problem here however is that the Hardcores are always a vocal minority in any game that they are playing, and they are ultimately trying to skew things towards their own demographic. I specifically called out Guild Wars 2 because that game implemented a very casual unfriendly world game event in the Dragon’s End zone, that also gates access to one of the key features of the End of Dragons expansion. This has started discussions within that community, specifically among the content creators about how exactly they can make players hardcore like themselves, and take all of the endgame progression seriously. The thing is… this is not a battle that they can win and if the game clamps down to focus more on serious content… the player numbers that they rely on will dwindle.

I feel like we have been watching this play out without realizing it in World of Warcraft. That game starting with Burning Crusade has become more and more a game that slowly pushes you onto one of several endgame onramps. You currently have three competitive communities of Raiding, PVP, and Mythic progression. I think there is a large group of players who come in at an expansion launch, play through the story, level a few alts, and are not seen again until the launch of the next expansion. What is left outside of the three competitive communities, is largely unrewarding and repetitive world content. Guild Wars 2 has shined in this department in that there are multiple paths to the best stuff in the game, one of which is a very serious crafting process that requires no endgame participation in order to accomplish it, just copious hours of gathering or gold.

Honestly, Final Fantasy XIV has the same problem of players bouncing when they complete the story content. I am very much one of these people, in spite also having been someone effectively playing the game many times in the past when it was considered to be in a content lull. The difference with FFXIV though is that they have a large number of systems not tied to the core game that folks seem to enjoy engaging with. You have the minigame-laden gold saucer, housing extreme if you can luck into winning a plot, the deep dungeon systems, and even the “limited job” of Blue Mage which effectively is a spell collection minigame. Even though there are still players that come and go with the content tides, there is way more content to keep folks engaged that is not directly tied to the core pillars of dungeons, raids, and ultimate.

The most thriving game is ultimately the one that respects its casual players the most and makes them feel like a part of the larger community… without asking them to conform to some specific ideas. I think the thing that the Hardcore player base needs to understand, is that they are very much in the minority and that not everyone views the games that they play as a competition. Please for the love of god let the casual players just enjoy the game, and stop trying to change them. This “change” takes place in two ways, indirectly by appealing constantly to the devs to make mechanics more punishing and more tailored to your specific interests. The other key way that change is invoked in a community is by creating an atmosphere that is hostile or toxic to anyone who does not perform in a specific manner under specific conditions.

I remember reading a specific article back in the day as to the small portion of the player base that ever experienced Naxxramas in World of Warcraft. While I could not find the specific article as I was writing this, I did find a YouTuber that tried to do some math on the percentage of players that saw a full clear of Naxxramas before Burning Crusade. This YouTuber clocks it at 0.07% of the total player population had a verified clear of Naxxramas before the Burning Crusade pre-patch. While raiding is significantly more popular today than it was at the time… you are still talking about a very small segment of the total player base that plays the game seriously enough to clear end-game content. I am not saying that end game content does not have a place, but the players who are actively engaged in it… need to understand the perspective that even today they represent a small minority of the total player base.

The success of a game over the long term… is in large part about the retention of your casual players. So when I read comments that a game is failing because it was not “hardcore enough” in one area or another I struggle to take them seriously. I’ve yet to see a game survive solely on their most hardcore players. If I could change anything about the larger community discourse, it would be to show a little respect for the players who are just playing the game to have fun. Maybe stop shaming them for not turning in the DPS you are expecting, or not having the right gear. Maybe just let them play the damned game and do whatever it is that is bringing them joy. The more welcoming the game is to casuals… the more casuals will ultimately decide on their own that they want to get serious about the game. Broadening the player base will also by side effect broaden the pool of players that eventually trickle up into the more serious content.

So again when I hear about some game failing, my takeaway is generally going to be that they did not support the more casual gamers enough. A game.. especially one with social aspects to it… needs to be super easy to engage with. Possibly even more important however is that games need to allow you to engage with your friends instantly. Too many games are situations where you need to get to some arbitrary objective where the “real game” begins before you can actually play with those who were early adopters. As someone who is often one of those early adopters, please give me ways to take my friends along in the journey rather than having to come up with ways to gently pressure them into focusing on leveling to the point where I can actually start helping them. I want my friends to love the game as much as I do… so please make it easy to love.

Anyways I have rambled enough for one post, and I am not sure I have a succinct point to wrap up. Basically, respect the casual gamers out there, and stop trying to change them. Let them engage with games in whatever method they choose, and stop shaming them along the way.

Barrel Bomb Bonanza

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Good Morning Folks! This morning I am coming back from five days off and it is going to be weird as hell to actually “punch the clock” again. Five days was plenty of time for me to get my sleep schedule completely mixed up. My “bladder alarm clock” wakes me up around 5, but actually getting up at that time is a whole other story. What I would have talked about yesterday had I posted though is the end of my Diablo III Seasonal Journey. The pied piper song I sing… managed to ensnare a handful of other people into this madness including Thalen and Grace, and Sunday we had a blast running around together and doing “Diabble” nonsense.

The funniest part of the journey however has to have been Saturday night while we were recording the podcast… I was trying to carry Grace to 70 and knock out a good chunk of the seasonal boss kills. The problem with this is the fact that Akkhan Invoker Bombardment is a weird build and is highly unpredictable. Essentially my gameplay pattern was to run around with horsey until I found a champ/elite pack and wait for the bombardment to clear everything before moving to the next pack. At low-level rifts, the Thorn’s damage from the partial Invoker set was enough to have some “on demand” killing power, but there really is no way to really quickly clear stragglers which meant I left a minefield of death for anyone getting drug along.

Granted Grace knew what they were getting themselves in for, but it was still hilarious the number of times we both died. See the other side effect of this specific build is the fact that it is fairly squishy. Every four seconds I rained death down from above, but the other three seconds… I was mostly just trying to stay alive which meant I spent an exceptional amount of time in horse form trying not to stand still. Granted I managed to clear a solo GR90 with this build and probably could have easily cleared higher, but it is maybe the worst pulling experience I have ever had, and eventually rotated out to a more standard Invoker build.

The other part of the season that was interesting was the inclusion of Petrified Screams which open a special kind of Rift called an Echoing Nightmare. This effectively is a horde mode wave clear sort of encounter and the number of waves you successfully clear gives you a gem with a matching level. In practice, these are a way of cheating your way through attunements, but you would also need a great source of raw gems in order to fuel them. What I did not expect however is for these to count towards seasonal achievements. By this point, I had already finished leveling my gems to 75 but when we ran down all of the Petrified Screams that each of us had gathered up on Sunday… it instantly completed a large number of seasonal achievements including a few conquests for Grace and Thalen. We also tried for a speed demon run and nailed it on the first attempt, and as such… while Grace only started Saturday night, they managed to wrap up their seasonal journey Sunday afternoon as well.

I had a blast working my way through this season, and while I will likely never use the ugly Lollipop pet, there is a sense of accomplishment in checking all of the boxes. In theory, there should be a new season starting before too much longer given that this current one started in April. Diablo III really is getting more creative in the sorts of things they are attempting during seasonal play, which reminds me quite a bit of the broad changes that take place during a Path of Exile league. The only thing that I wish is that all of the things they add in for seasons… stuck around during non-seasonal play essentially slowly adding more content to the game. The Echoing Nightmares are a really fun game mode, and I could see people doing these if the petrified screams continued to drop. I briefly contemplated starting a Hardcore seasonal character, because I have never done such a thing… but that is a doubtful proposition.

In other Diablo news, I continue to poke and prod at Diablo Immortal. The truth is it is actually a really good game if you can somehow look past the monetization scheme. I’ve spent zero dollars and I absolutely feel like I am at a lower power level than a good number of people in my level bracket. However, it doesn’t seem to be really impacting what I could be doing right now. Sure if I had some of them fancy legendary gems, I could probably be farming Hell II difficulty right now instead of Hell I, but then again I still need gear from Hell I. This has very much turned into a before bedtime game for me as I fairly casually complete content and do bounties on my phone and using the Gamesir X2 controller. All in all, this runs pretty well on my phone, or well enough to be doing any of the content I have encountered thus far.

I have to say though there is this weird uncanny valley going on where I know I am playing a Diablo game, on some level I would think I was playing a traditional MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The whole aspect of always encountering other players everywhere I go, and the fact that I am effectively running dungeons the same way that folks run dungeons in WoW, triggers that experience. Yesterday there was bonus loot for Forgotten Tower, and essentially we would pull everything up to the next barrier and burn it down there just like you would run a dungeon in WoW or FFXIV. Given however that every class is effectively self-sustaining… it also gives me deep Guild Wars 2 vibes when it comes to doing large group content. When a zone event is happening there ends up being a huge swarm of players… and there are even mechanics that you have to pay attention to in order to succeed.

We also saw the end of the first Cycle of Strife, which crowned the Dark Clan Eden as the new Immortals and the massive whale Megashield as the new server Immortal. If you are curious you can watch the video of the final battle where Megashield won on our server. He reportedly spent 100k on that character, which seems like complete madness to me. That is honestly one of the most disturbing elements of this game is how expensive it is. When Techtone talked about spending 20,000 in a few months of Genshin Impact I thought that was complete madness, but this takes it to a whole new level. Streamer Quin (aka the same dude who boosted in FFXIV then got mad that he struggled to play the game) was doing 10 crest runs attempting to get a 5-star gem. It reportedly cost him $15,870.66 before getting one or roughly 635 10 Legendary Crest greater rift runs.

Admittedly this is a bit of a false narrative, but it makes for good headlines. Just like boosting in FFXIV and then complaining about not understanding anything… doing nothing but 10 crest runs over and over is a bit of a “wrong way to play the game” scenario. He specifically was chasing a natural drop of a 5-star gem with all 5 stars populated. However, in those 635 runs, it is extremely likely that he managed to get multiple copies of Echoing Shade, and probably enough to have made a 5/5 star version of that a long time ago. I think at least on some level… a lot of the spending associated with this game is players trying to brute force their way to ultimate victory. Paying no money… I am still getting an awful lot of enjoyment out of the game on its own merits without feeling the need to chase these Legendary Gems.

Please note… I do not exclude any of the monetizations that are going on. This is absolutely a game that was designed to prey on the worst instincts of gamblers. While watching the Immortal Battle from a few different perspectives, I spent some time watching a Twitch stream of a clan made up of almost nothing but massive whales. Listening to those guys goading each other into spending money on voice chat… felt sickening. At the same time, there were multiple references of the same folks doing crypto gambling, which I did not even know was a thing and seems like a really great way to lose a lot of money. In just the fifteen minutes or so that I watched, it was very clear that the folks talking were gambling addicts. There were folks talking about spending at least $250 to $1000 a day on the game… and that just isn’t sustainable by anyone for long.

AggroChat #393 – Ethically Funding Games

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Tonight was a weird show.  Firstly we are recording this show on Belghast’s Birthday, which in our almost 400 episodes I am not sure we have actually recorded on one of our Birthdays before.  We set out with the mission of recording a show about the “Not E3” festivities that have been going on but get sidetracked as one does.  Instead, we go down a path of talking about Diablo Immortal once again, but from the standpoint of how exactly one should be funding game development.  Clearly, the NetEase and Blizzard team chose violence, but how exactly does one fund modern game development costs when the market has shown that if the price trickles up from $60…  folks freak out.  From there we do eventually return to talking about Sony, Microsoft, and whatever Geoff Keighly is running that now serves as the replacement for E3.

Topics Discussed

  • Bel’s Birthday
  • Diablo Immortal Again
  • Funding Games Ethically
  • Gamepass Model
  • Microsoft Show
  • Silksong
  • Valheim Cross Play between Gamepass and Steam
  • Star Citizen, Starfield, and the era of Space Games
  • Redfall
  • The Gamesir X2 controller reprised

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rethinking DIablo Immortal

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Okay friends I am going to do a bit of a thought experiment. I have spent so much time focused on the awful monetization systems, that I am going to take a step back and evaluate the game based on all of the systems that do not involve spending money. This is a huge fucking ask mind you because especially considering that the game reminds you that you can spend money an awful lot. However this morning I am going to make a case for Diablo Immortal the game, not the scheme to separate you from your hard-earned money. Ultimately I am looking at how good of a job this game does of being a Diablo title that is designed to be played in bite-sized segments on your phone.

The Case For Immortal

Bite Sized Interactions

The game has an almost overwhelming amount of boxes to tick, and the deeper you go into the game it seems like more of these systems open up. I now have way more daily systems than I can realistically interact with at least on the level that I am playing this game. Each of these systems only takes a few minutes to play through, which makes them generally ideal for mobile interaction. Collectively they add up to a lot and in theory every single day I should be doing:

  • 1 or more Elder Rifts
  • 1 or more Challenge Rifts
  • 8 Bounties (or more if you missed days)
  • Legacy of the Horadrim
  • Helliquary
  • 5 Shadow Bounties
  • Path of Blood
  • 3 Bestiary Pages
  • Any Daily Quests
  • Any Bonus Dungeons

While Elder Rifts are deeply fraught, they can be run for free without the use of any crests and I have managed to get a full set of “pity” Legendary Gems while running basic crests without spending a time. Sure my resonance is crap as compared to the whales but the game seems completely playable regardless. The rest of the systems are open to players without needing to spend any money and offer several hours’ worth of playtime. As to whether or not you can actually make “progress” in these systems that is another question entirely. I however have found a large number of Legendary armor items out in the open world and from the rewards, I have gotten from both bounty caches and turning in bestiary pages.

Interesting Social Systems

Another thing that Diablo Immortal has gone for is that there are multiple layers of social interactions, that end up adding up to their own systems of interaction. First, you have an 8-player Warband which is its own close-knit group with a reward structure depending on playing together regularly. There is gear that the entire team gains access to, and from what I am hearing it is often a world tier higher than what you can equip through other means. I have largely been playing solo and as such have not interacted with this system in a significant way. I however have seen folks talking about it and it looks cool.

Then you have clans that serve the purpose of a guild, and over time you gain perks as a result of being in a clan. Wythfern is lead by my friend Namaslays and we recently had to kick out anyone that was not high enough level to be a “shadow” in order to make the clan a Dark Clan. That mechanic needs some work to be honest because I do not love that in order to align your clan and gain the benefits of that… EVERYONE has to be a Shadow. Essentially there is Adventurer, Shadow, and Immortal and they are all essentially mutually exclusive alignments.

These factions all have their own perks, but I think the sweet spot is probably being a shadow. There is this whole guild conflict system that we will probably never be big enough to actually interact with, but essentially there is one single clan that are the Immortals of the server, and then any number of Shadow Clans that keep them in check. The ten strongest shadow clans can challenge the immortals once per week, and if the Immortal is defeated… then there is a free for all among the top shadow clans to determine who the next immortal is.

Again it is highly unlikely Wytchfern will ever be one of the top 10 shadow clans on the server, but what this faction alignment does give us is a bunch of new daily levers to pull in order to get loot and gameplay opportunities.

Nuanced Build Options

I have yet to cap out my character and start working on the paragon system. However, I have seen enough of the game through the eyes of others in order to understand the path forward. There are a number of systems that interact with each other that allow you to create a fairly interesting character build. I am going to spend a little bit of time talking about each of these systems, and how they effectively add up to a character build.

The first component of a character build is the abilities that you are using. These unlock as you play through the game and level up and pretty much represent all of the abilities that you are familiar with from other Diablo games. Essentially you have one of two primary attacks, and then four skills that you can have equipped at a time. There is not a ton of synergy between the skills themselves, which is I think in part why the game felt a little shallow until I started opening up the next system.

The next component of your build is the six pieces of legendary gear that you have equipped on the right side of your character portrait. Each piece has some sort of a trait on it, which are effectively the equivalent of the combination of runes that you choose in Diablo 3 and the legendary/set gear that you equip. Each one mutates the base skills you have equipped in specific ways and grants you access to that inter-ability synergy that was missing.

At first, I thought this system was sort of crap, in that it seemed you just needed to be lucky to get the right items at the right level in order to have the build that you actually wanted at any given time. Then I stumbled onto the essence transfer system which is this game’s equivalent of Kunai’s Cube. Essentially you can consume an item, spend a bit of gold, and then collect the special effect of any piece of legendary gear. Then at will, you can go to the Essence Transfer merchant and effectively give any new piece of gear the effect of any item you have consumed. This allows you to take those items that are a significant upgrade, but make them function like the items you need for a given build.

The next piece is something that I have yet to experience in the game because it is not a system that you can interact with prior to the maximum level. The six items that appear on the left-hand side of your character portrait make up this game’s version of the “Set Items”. Instead of needing to choose between wearing a set item or a legendary item in a given slot, they have effectively separated all of your gear so that you will always be utilizing both. Every piece of gear has a specific place where it drops, so it is just a matter of grinding out until you get it.

Another system that I have yet to be able to interact with is the Paragon system. Much like Diablo 3, after you hit the maximum level you start gaining Paragon points. Instead of these being pure stat increases, they go into what is effectively a talent tree with an example shown above. These choices give you power but can also be used to shape your build in a specific direction. If you want to be really tanky, then there is a path for that. If you want to be pure dps… then there is a path for that.

Now we get into the bad parts of the character build… the first of course being the six legendary gems that you are utilizing. Again this is a system that you only have the most basic interaction with as a free player because you will never see anything higher than a two-star gem, which means there are nine of the most powerful gems you will never see… unless you figure out some way of gaming the system and making lots of platinum. Each gem gives you specific boosts and the total quality of all of the gems equipped gives you a flat increase in total effectiveness. A bad system, but it is nonetheless part of the character build profile.

Lastly of the systems, I am currently aware of, you have charms. These are the most RNG thing I have ever experienced in a game, and each time you level one of these up… you a random bonus to some ability in the game. It is highly likely that MOST of these skill increases will be for a class you are not even playing. Each bonus has between a 2% and 10% increase, but one with 2% will always end up giving you 2% on all abilities on the charm. So not only is it highly unlikely that you are going to get a bonus to your class… it is equally unlikely you are going to get a buff to an ability that you actually use. The goal is to get a Charm with your primary attack and all four of your skills on it, but that will take a lot of effort and a lot of platinum. There is a whole system of extracting a skill stone from a charm for 500 platinum, and then using that skill stone to imbue another charm… probably being it chooses a random ability from the charm you extracted from. A purposefully frustrating system that is going to be a massive platinum sink for those who chose to chase it.

Other than the two last systems… I think the game does a pretty solid job of giving you a bunch of levers that you can pull to finally end up with a pretty engaging character to play.

Fun Gameplay

Essentially it is a core Diablo fix in your pocket. The gameplay feels enough like a mainline Diablo game to be satisfying. I have to give the team credit that this is a really well-crafted experience and the story helps to plug the gap between the events of Diablo 2 and the events of Diablo 3. When I say Diablo Immortal is a dumpster fire, I am not talking about the actual gameplay. To be honest I would love to be able to play this game on the Nintendo Switch. I think this is maybe the perfect Diablo for a platform like that. The problem is that monetization is always there lurking in the background and ultimately tarnishes the good feelings that this game has in it.

The Case Against

Overly Aggressive Per Character Monetization

I feel like I don’t need to go into this one at length because I have done so in another post. The ways this game has to extract money from you are many and are constantly just lurking beneath the surface. There are definitely three classes of citizens in Diablo land: The serfs (free players), the knights(limited payers), and the lords(the whales). If you can ignore it completely there is still a really enjoyable game to be experienced, but the fact it is always there always trying to open your wallet just feels bad.

Anemic Rewards

Diablo by nature is a grindy game, but Immortal makes a standard Diablo game feel like the most rewarding loot fest you have ever experienced. Coming back to Diablo 3 felt like I was bathing in a constant wash of dopamine hits as Legendaries dropped my manna from heaven all around me. Almost everything you are going to do in Diablo Immortal is going to feel deeply unrewarding. Generally speaking white quality and blue quality loot is useless… which is why you will see players not even bothering to loot it in videos. Yellow quality is somewhat useful but only for the single material you are going to get from breaking it down… and you will need to repeat that process 50 to 100 times per item slot depending on the tier of gear you are trying to upgrade to. It feels bad to play for an hour and feel like you really didn’t make much in the way of progress or get any interesting loot in the process.

Traditional Diablo Games Exist

I think my biggest strike against Diablo Immortal is the fact that other Diablo games exist and feel way more rewarding for your time. I’ve been back having a blast in Diablo 3 and swimming in rewards… and it feels great. I will say though that playing Diablo Immortal has made me really wish that the PC version of Diablo 3 had controller support. What Diablo Immortal gives you that no other game can is the ability to play it on your phone. If you are not playing it on your phone… then I think at some point you will probably drift back to whatever your ARPG of choice is… because it will treat you better in the long run. Already seeing folks going back to other Diablo games like I did or Path of Exile/Torchlight.

Summary Judgement

Diablo Immortal is actually really fun to play, for short periods of time. The thing is that formula kinda fits the mobile device footprint perfectly. I am not sure about you, but when I play a mobile game I tend to play it for 5 to 15 minutes at a time before doing something else. In that amount of time, you could do two or three activities and then go on and do something else for a while, without feeling like you are being interrupted. I would say this is a Diablo uniquely targetted at its original intended market, and we would probably not be judging it so harshly were it not for the fact that it came from a AAA franchise and was also released on PC at the same time. This PC release is namely what I think is making us view it in a very specific light that is deeply unflattering to the game.

I absolutely think the monetization strategy is awful, and there is nothing I will ever say that provides cover to it in any way. I think had this launched with a battle pass and cosmetics, we would have welcomed it with open arms. It is really the Legendary Gem system that is the sticking point, and how the best stuff is currently completely locked off to being an exclusive whale thing. If they made monetization tweaks it could be fairer… but the damage has already been done. Even if in six months I create a post expounding upon how much better everything is… it is not going to move the needle. I mean shit I have done this with New World and I have seen almost none of my friends attempting to give it a second chance.

Diablo Immortal gives me equal parts of hope and fear about what Diablo 4 is going to look like. The team has come out in force to say that Diablo 4 will not have the monetization that Diablo Immortal did. While I want to believe them… there is always going to be lingering doubt. Monetization aside, however, I do actually like a lot of the systems design work that went into Diablo Immortal and if we see things along those lines with Diablo 4, I think I am probably going to enjoy myself greatly. I especially like the social structures within Immortal, and I am hoping we see something like that happening in Diablo 4. If you are a big fan of the Diablo franchise, and especially Diablo 3… then I really do think that Diablo Immortal is worth playing with a whole stack of caveats attached to that statement. I still plan on staying in the serf territory, because I do not relish the thought of rewarding whoever came up with this awful monetization scheme. That said were things different I likely would have bought the battlepass and maybe some cosmetics and paid upwards of a $60 boxed game price on this. For the time being however that is a pandora’s box I am leaving sealed shut as I continue to dabble around in the parts of the game that cost me nothing… of which it is ample especially as a tertiary game.